Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for displaying maintenance steps of an apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, there has been proposed an image forming apparatus that presents steps of maintenance work such as removing a jammed sheet, replacing the toner cartridge, and replenishing staples in the form of a movie (US 2008/0278753 A1). This is for helping users to perform maintenance work more smoothly by taking advantage of the expressiveness and abundant volume of information of a movie.
Such movies showing maintenance steps of an image forming apparatus have been prepared so that each movie deals with a different maintenance work.
In the case of removing a jammed sheet, for example, a series of operation steps made up of the operation of first opening a door that is provided in the casing of the image forming apparatus in order to access the jammed place in the image forming apparatus, the operation of next removing the jammed sheet, and the operation of closing the door thereafter is prepared as one movie.
A user who is following a movie that shows maintenance steps to operate (for maintenance) the image forming apparatus often takes his/her eyes away from the movie for a moment while operating the image forming apparatus. For example, in the case of the operation of removing a jammed sheet that is stuck in a conveying portion, operating the apparatus while watching the movie is difficult. The user therefore lets the movie keep playing without watching the movie while performing the operation of removing the jammed sheet.
When the user takes long in removing the jammed sheet in this case, the movie moves ahead regardless of the user's will. A time lag is consequently created between a maintenance step that the user is to execute and a step that is being played on the movie. Another problem is that, when the user wishes to re-check the step, it is not easy to figure out how far the movie needs to be rewound for playback. A possible solution is, for example, automatically stopping (pausing) the movie between maintenance steps.
However, some states of the image forming apparatus necessitate the presentation of a plurality of maintenance steps to the user. In this case, a problem remains in that automatically stopping the movie between every two steps in an equal manner requires the trouble of performing movie playing operation again and again of the user.
The present invention has been made in view of the above, and a main object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus capable of presenting to a user movies that show operation steps for solving a maintenance event occurring in the apparatus without increasing the number of times the user needs to perform the operation of playing the movie.